It wasn't a long note, only a line or two thanking me for the attention I
had paid to his team in the early part of the season, so to understand why
it seems significant to me you'd probably have to know a few things.

Clay Gould was the head baseball coach at the University of Texas at
Arlington. I run a college baseball Web site, moderately successful as
these things go, but with readership numbers that wouldn't make a print
publication bother to take the time to think about blinking. As a general
rule, coaches tend to think of sportswriters as a necessary evil, sometime
omitting the "necessary" part, and for him to take the time to send a
note of thanks to me just for doing my job (I hadn't said much about his
team, just properly listed them in my rankings) was quite a nice thing;
although I've gotten questions from a few other coaches, he's the only
one to ever write just to say thanks.

Secondly, you should know that he wrote the note on March 15 of this year.
Within a month of that time, he went into the hospital for good, in the end
succumbing to a case of cancer that he had battled for a year-and-a-half and
passing away on Saturday, June 23. He couldn't have been in great health in
March, but he was still working hard and taking the time to do the little
things that help build a program and a sport.

Clay Gould was 29. You can read the details of his career
in the AP release on his
death; he had made a great start in his two years as head coach and would
doubtless have left a mark on the profession.

I never got to meet Coach Gould, and I won't diminish the loss of those who
were close to him by claiming a relationship that didn't exist, but we
often form our opinions of people based on smaller acts than a random
unnecessary but kind note, and my opinion of him was nothing but good. I
have been fortunate enough to have contact with one of his players' mothers
during the time before his illness progressed and to discuss him with a few
of his colleagues, and the coach they described was someone that I would
want my son to play for one of these days, someone who was open with his
players and truly cared about their development rather than the win-loss
bottom line.

Clay Gould is survived by a wife and a ten-month-old daughter; my
condolences and prayers go out to them. The family has asked that, in
lieu of flowers, charitable donations be made to one of the following: